Just playing around with the iPad app Animoog, which I believe is still available for $0.99 at the iTunes app store. This is a huge bargain on a really really cool app.  I won’t get into the specifics of the app, but if you want to know more about what Animoog is or how to use it, I recommend this YouTube video.

So, while playing around with the Animoog app, if you go into the setup menu there is a selection under ‘Refresh MIDI input(s)’ where  you can select ‘Off’ or ‘Network Session 1’.  This intrigued me!  Apparently you can use MIDI over the ‘Network’.  After some Googling I was still unclear on how to get this setup, so I thought I’d just tell everyone how I did it so you can get to making some cool tunes yourself.

I’m assuming your PC has iTunes installed and you have the Bonjour service that comes with it.  It should work without it but you lose the auto-discovery.  OK, so first thing you’re going to need is the Animoog app on your iPad.  Once that is installed, you’re going to need rtpMIDI which is available for free here.  (Download link on the top right).  I’m using Windows 7 64 bit for reference.  Once you download the rtpMIDI, unzip it and execute the .msi file to install it.  There is a better tutorial for installing rtpMIDI here so I won’t re-iterate everything.  The TL;DR version is Install, click Next, Next, Next, agree to anything that pops up, and done.

After the rtpMIDI is installed, run rtpMIDI from the start menu.  Click the + under ‘My Sessions’ and choose a new name or leave it as default.

 

 

 

Next highlight the (only) session and click the enable box on the right.  Now at this point Bonjour probably hasn’t caught up with you yet to display your iPad in the Directory box like mine.  If it does, click connect.  If it doesn’t click the + under Directory and type in the IP address of your iPad followed by :5004.  eg.  ‘192.168.5.104:5004’ which is the case with mine.  You can get the WIFI IP address of your iPad by going to Settings ->General->Network->Wi-Fi->(Your Wi-Fi access point’s name) and you’ll see ‘IP Address’.  It’s usually something like 192.168.1.100 or so.

After adding an item in the Directory, highlight it and click connect.  If successfull it should show up in the ‘Participants window’.  Leave this application running.

OK, still with me?  Good.  Next, run Animoog, click on the top right where it says ‘Settings’, then on the left under ‘Refresh MIDI input(s)’ select ‘Network Session 1’.

At this point I’m going to presume that most software that uses MIDI output on  your PC will work, however I did not try them.  I’m going to use Fruity Loops Studio 9.

Once you fire up Fruity Loops, start with a fresh setup.  Goto Options->MIDI settings.  On the top you should see something similar to my screenshot.  The name of your ‘Session’ you used in rtpMIDI.  Highlight that MIDI Device, click Send Master Sync (so you can control BPM from FLStudio) and set the Port Number to 0.  Close this dialog.

 

Next, goto Channels->Add one->MIDI out.  On the channel settings, make sure you set the Channel to ‘1’ and the Port to ‘0’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point you should be able to click the little virtual keyboard and hear it play on your iPad.

If this works, then you are all set up.  If not then either you missed a step or I forgot to mention the step (hah!).

You can start making your patterns with notes and hear them play back on the iPad.  You still have to setup your preset in Animoog on the iPad, and it doesn’t appear that all the functionality is supported.  Some notes don’t appear to work (things like pitch, etc.)  I presume if you had multiple iPads you could set them all up with different presets and make some really killer music.

 

And here is a quick little YouTube video showing it working.